A method for creating a one-page problem-solving, proposal, or status document using the PDCA cycle: plan, do, check, and act.

For investigating root causes, proposing an initiative, or reporting progress in a structured Markdown A3 document.

It structures the reasoning so the writer examines facts, current conditions, causes, actions, and follow-up instead of jumping straight to a solution.

a3-thinking — Skill for Claude Code and Codex by Livus-AI/Skills-MCP

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent

npx skills add Livus-AI/Skills-MCP --skill a3-thinking

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Livus-AI/Skills-MCP

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/livus-ai/skills-mcp/a3-thinking/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/livus-ai/skills-mcp/a3-thinking)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/livus-ai/skills-mcp/a3-thinking"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/livus-ai/skills-mcp/a3-thinking/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/livus-ai/skills-mcp/a3-thinking"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/livus-ai/skills-mcp/a3-thinking.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 97 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 1,032 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.

Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00097	$0.01032
Opus 5.5	$0.00039	$0.00413
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00019	$0.00206
Haiku 4.5	$0.00010	$0.00103

Measured 2mo ago against content hash 76e3e92f6a51, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

a3-thinking scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2mo ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (scripts/save_a3.py), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/a3-thinking/SKILL.md · 87 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 87 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

A3 Thinking

Produce an A3: a single-page, story-format document that walks a problem (or proposal, or status) through the PDCA cycle. The artifact is markdown; the value is the thinking — disciplined, fact-based reasoning that resists jumping to solutions.

Core principle: the A3 is the artifact, A3 thinking is the point. Your job is to coach the content into shape first, then save it. A polished template over shallow analysis is a failed A3.

The three variants

Variant	Use when	Sections
`problem-solving`	A real, important problem whose root cause isn't yet understood	Background · Current Condition · Goal · Root-Cause Analysis · Countermeasures · Implementation Plan · Follow-Up
`proposal`	Pitching a new initiative or investment (forward-looking business case)	Background · Current Situation · Goal · Analysis · Proposal · Implementation Plan · Expected Results & Follow-Up
`status`	Reporting progress on an ongoing effort	Background · Current State · Results · Remaining Issues / Next Actions

If unsure which variant fits, ask. Don't default to problem-solving for work that is actually a proposal or a status update.

Full section-by-section guidance, root-cause techniques, and when-NOT-to-use are in references/a3-guide.md. Filled examples per variant are in references/worked-examples.md. Load them with get_skill_resource when you need depth.

Workflow (coach first, then save)

Pick the variant and confirm it fits.
Work the sections in order, with the user. This is the coaching step — the bulk of the value. Hold these lines:
- Frame the title as a problem/theme, not a solution ("Shipping errors rising", not "Add barcode scanner").
- Current state before future state. Get facts and a measured gap before any countermeasure. Ask for real data; flag assumptions as assumptions.
- Set a measurable, time-bound target (Goal section).
- For problem-solving: do root-cause analysis before countermeasures (5-Why / fishbone). Each countermeasure must trace to a root cause.
- Keep it tight — an A3 is one page. Cut anything non-essential.
Save once the content is agreed:

Read the full file on GitHub · 87 lines

Files

What ships with it

4 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

2mo ago First seen · 87 lines · 97 tokens per session scan A 76e3e92f6a51

Subscribe to this mod's changes

a3-thinking is a skill published in the GitHub repository Livus-AI/Skills-MCP (2 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 97 tokens to every session and 1,032 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

Planning

a3-thinking next to 6 skills from other repositories
Mod	Type	Stars	Last push	Licence	Scan	Tokens	Works with
a3-thinkingLivus-AI/Skills-MCP	Skill	2	5mo ago	MIT	A	97	Claude Code, Codex
imagegenopenai/codex	Skill	134k	today	Apache-2.0	A	113	Codex
local-ai-agentsmicrosoft/ai-agents-for-beginners	Skill	79k	today	MIT	A	200	Claude Code, Codex
playwright-climicrosoft/playwright	Skill	99k	today	Apache-2.0	A	19	Claude Code
systematic-debuggingobra/superpowers	Skill	314k	3d ago	MIT	A	21	Claude Code
next-cache-components-adoptionvercel/next.js	Skill	143k	today	MIT	A	95	Claude Code
chat-pet-sprite-creationmicrosoft/vscode	Skill	195k	today	MIT	A	53	Claude Code, Codex